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Okay, Back to Work. Introducing the Hot Stove Season!

We all got our deep breath after one helluva World Series. I know some are calling Game 5 the “greatest World Series game ever.” Whereas I admit it was exhausting, even enervating, now that the pins and needles have subsided and the little gray hairs are once again lying flush against my forearms, I still insist that this one was the greatest series game ever, with 17/5 right behind it:

My basis for judgment here is simply that nothing beats a walkoff home run, not even a walkoff single with a play at the plate that isn’t really close. Feel free to try and change my mind. Good luck.

Beep Beep Soils the Bedpad Yet Again

Anyway, we have now embarked upon the hot stove season with Derek “Beep Beep” Jeter (to whom I will henceforth refer as “LoriaLight” depending on the context; see below), in the latest of his nonstop public relations disasters since assuming command of the star-kist…er…star crossed Feesh, declining Ichiro Suzuki’s option year at a chump change two million. I mean, good grief, that would be a bargain price for a hitting coach this good. What’s more, Ichiro and Beep Beep were supposed to be good pals when they benched together on the Borg. Can you imagine how he would’ve treated Ichiro if he didn’t like him?

My take: it would have been too much for Beep Beep to have a player on his roster who continued to be productive for years longer than our new president of baseball ops when he wheezed and crapped out.

So, we alienate another third of the remaining fan base, which is no longer substantial enough to support one of those old plastic ball joint stands that used to come with Revell model airplanes. Remember?

No?

Okay, here’s one:

Putting together a new Feesh roster is gonna be about as easy as slipping that little wire ring around the two halves of the female socket and then forcing the model into the socket without snapping the vertical stand orffa the little plastic globe at the bottom, remember?

No?

Your loss.

When we left LoriaLight, he was trying to cut the Feesh payroll down to a reported $90MM but at the rate he’s going this franchise will probably save more money on postgame janitorial services than player salaries.

No-Brainer of the Week: Pirates pick up Andrew McCutcheon’s option.

Okay, so what are your assessments of where the also-rans are heading this orfseason?

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22 thoughts on “Okay, Back to Work. Introducing the Hot Stove Season!”

The new front office here is regarded as having advanced the Twins approach to analytics out of the bronze age, so I am hopeful. Per the everyday lineup and bullpen I see some tinkering as likely and a continued effort to bring the young guys along.

But a major move might be made for a quality starting pitcher. They picked up some nice looking prospects at the deadline (for Kintzler who I hope they get back off the free agent market) but, since even with Santana having a career year, which they shouldn’t count on repeating, they wound up trying about 86 guys to alleviate their Santana – Berrois – three days of poo poo rotation.

The purpose of the hot stove league is to warm the winter with wishful fantasies. One of my fantasies is that the Twins sign Yu Darvish, who is probably not particularly popular in the LA area at the moment. I’ve read that it’s believed that his poor playoff performance was due to him excitedly tipping his fastball by shaking his glove in earnest determination, or some damn thing like that. I’d bet that when shown the game videos this young man, who appeared to me to react to his failures with grace, will enlist that same earnest determination to correct himself. His market worth is probably less than his on the field worth because of the center stage PR black eye he just took.

Thanks Gator for filling the gap here, providing us with opportunities to chat in the midst of the soul of the soulless void. If sufficiently interesting things on the baseball front get too scarce, I’d enjoy talking with you about writing, even though the art of it might be dissolving away in the age of Twitter and our semi literate boy president. Why is it inadvisable to start a sentence with a preposition? I’ve never understood that.

More important, vhy does a Jew alvays answer a kvestion mit a kvestion?
A lot of traditional grammar rules have gone the way of the Babbage engine. Split infinitives? Meh. Spawrtsriters would have destroyed that stricture all by themselves even without the advent of that first redoubt of imbecility, Twitter. Sentence fragments? Brother. You’d think the well tempered sentence had been rigged with improvised explosive devices.

But let me not seem unappreciative of your approbation. You’re welcome. Thanks for the rundown on the Tweenkies. Now let’s hear from sycophants of other teams, eh? Eh?

Having gotten struck down by plague while on this business trip, I have been biding my time until I can get both body and soul together. But once I do I will be discussing the hot mess that are the Braves and the stagnant pond that is Milwaukee.

Yeah, I got a ten-day-incubating north European wretched fall weather case of bronchitis as a reward for my presentation on the postmodern picaresque in the novels of Louise Erdrich and the Brown Dog tales of Jim Harrison at the University of Mainz last month. However, I did get to eat saumagen twice and munch the medlars out of the Calvados shots, so I can’t be too upset.

Good times. Just flying back from the TC to Charm City was bad enough. Couldn’t imagine winging it over the ocean. Of course, I thought I was feeling better but last night my body was like, Joke’s on you, Prof!

Take a page from my wife’s playbook. She once flew from San Francisco to Sydney with me while dealing with food poisoning in its least fragrant form. Thank Buddha for Qantas’ oversized diagonally trans-Pacific carry on luggage bins.
But then, she’s British.

SF Giants are looking at three rings in five years through the rearview mirror. I don’t know what Bochy’s contract situation is, but considering what just happened to his coaching staff, if I were him I’d be thinking of retirement, maybe somewhere in France. Languedoc. Rousillon.

Incidentally, there was an early French airliner named after Languedoc. They used it to ferry the curious and the colonial between the homeland and colonies like Algeria back when exploitation of little brown skinned people was still considered chic. Ah, a more elegant age in air travel:

As to my perpetual object of sycophancy, the Astros are amazingly unaffected by free agencies. Three were last minute playoff buys (Maybin, Liriano, Clippard) and are unlikely. Maybin is to pricey against some of the minor league outfielders coming up, Clippard couldn’t make the playoff team, and Liriano probably belongs as a #4 starter.
I found Carlos Beltran’s tears quite affecting at the championship celebration, but that was a one year gig. Gregerson is the only likely keeper.
Arbitration is going to kick their butts, but that is the price of success. The number I see coming up is about an extra $24 MM$ on the budget. Of course they have that money from this year’s playoff run.
Needs?
1. Another #3 or better starter. Preferably a lefty. I’m in the minority, but I’m not convinced McCullers is a natural starter.
2. A general bullpen upgrade. Their set up staff looked very vulnerable, and they absolutely need a couple of lefties there. Giles probably hangs on as closer, but we know now not as a six innings closer.
3. Another outfielder. Maybin? Probably not. They have two hotshot minor leaguers in the system, but I don’t know if they are quite ready. And they need to be realistic about Marwin Gonzalez being that good again for a season.

Oh yeah. Give Altuve some kind of deal that remotely approximates his worth. His current contract is highway robbery.

Well, I will say that he is less of a star than people were thinking before the playoffs. I think there is a likelihood that we just witnessed a career year.

But he is a pretty good outfielder with an accurate arm. His career stats are adequate to keep him a job in that lineup. But I expect one of the challenges of 2018 will be covering his regression to mean performance.